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A tale of two cities

Syed Maqsud Jamil
I happened to be in the chamber of my friend, a prominent lawyer of the country'. He was giving legal advice to another friend about the vacation of a court injunction. His ancestral land on the North South Road near Bangshal cross-roads has been forcibly occupied by a thuggish city commissioner who is absconding.
While advising a firm stand on the injunction, my lawyer friend vented his scorn against our city fathers past and present. He was particularly incensed about the ubiquitous presence of markets wherever the land was vacated by government bodies. By that he meant the mess in and around Fulbaria and Gulistan.
Yes, indeed, the city of Dhaka with over 10 million people does not have a single open space where city dwellers can inhale clean air. In this respect the Kolkatans are fortunate in having a capacious Gorer Math (Open Ground). Dhaka still has remnants of an open space in Paltan Maidan (Paltan Ground).
The open space of Paltan has shrunk considerably after the hockey stadium was set up to make politics difficult. In the diminution of Paltan Maidan, Dhaka has also lost a part of its heritage.
Dhaka was very near to getting its maidan when the Ramna racecourse was shut down. It was turned into a wooded park and was named ’Suhrawardy Uddyan." Soon, a part of it was claimed for "Shishu Park." Even that could be defended, for the city needed an amusement park for children.
The wooded park has descended into infamy because the cover of darkness provided by it started attracting pleasure girls and muggers. Soon it became a Godforsaken place as decent folks stayed away from it In recent times, the Uddyan was taken was taken over for building Swadhinata Sthombo (Liberty Column).
An outgoing advisor of the caretaker government was ready to hand over 25 acres of the park for the development of a golf course for Dhaka Club. Dhaka had a maidan in Paltan, but its eminence is lost. Fulbaria was an open space, it was lost to markets and bus
stands, and the racecourse has been brutalised. The mega city now breathes without a maidan for its teeming population. We can only lament the loss. Can we now conceive of an open space for Dhaka?
A city Is judged by its heritage and aesthetic standard. These are the marks that lend eminence and character to a city. A city is, therefore, as good as its city fathers, its planners, and. above all, its leaders. Dhaka has not been fortunate in this regard. Kolkata has fared much better because it is a legacy of the vaunted British Raj. Its successors have been equally committed and caring in upholding its heritage.
Dhaka, although older than Kolkata by hundred years if we consider Jahangir Nagar as the starting point, has suffered due to the profligacy and covetous nature of its patrons. The Heritage Council protects Kolkata from brutish builders and from the high-rise scramble. It takes years in Kolkata to get permission for dismantling an old building.
Pitifully, Dhaka is suffering wholesale abuse from the merchants of power and benders of law. There is no system, and if there
is one it pays obeisance to power and office. It has robbed Dhaka of the last vestiges of its heritage. As for aesthetic standard, there is none, only the wholesale scramble for high-rise growth. It will be a futile exercise to try to find eminence and character in this mindless chaos.
Wari was the first residential area of Dhaka. TJ. Rankin, the then magistrate of Dhaka, set it up in 1880. Planned with great precision, the original plots were of one bigha, with 30 feet wide north-south and east-west roads marking it like a lattice. Almost all the houses were single floor one-unit mansions, or
2-storied palatial mansions with sprawling lawns or gardens in the front.
Wari was serenely quiet even in the eighties, with few vehicles crossing the streets. The consulates of the British and Indian High Commissions were located in Wari in the late forties. The Indian High Commission was in a Rankin Street house, which later became Kabitangan (Poesy Place) when Justice Nurul and his poetess wife Jahanara Arzu became the owner of the house.
The house has been long brought down for a high-rise building. Bhabesh Chandra Nandi the
renowned physician, and the personal physician of Huq Sahib, used to reside in 37 Rankin Street. There was the red-brick palatial mansion of the landlord of Dhala, which became Text Book Board building after the 1965 Pakistan-India War. There were two palatial mansions belonging to Manik Ghosh, in Nawab Street and in Larmini Street. One of them even contained the 19th century memorial plaques of his ancestors.
And who can forget that Nobel laureate Amartya Sen grew up in Wari in his parental house in Larmini Street. Only the Dhala zamindar's house and the one in
Nawab Street survive even today, and stand statuesquely. The sprawling compound of Manik Ghosh's house has given way to a party centre. The main mansion has been repainted beyond recognition, and Is the head office of Haji Islam Group. So when a young photographer friend asked for my help in taking photographs of the mansions and palaces of Wari as a part of his work on the heritage of Dhaka, I had to tell him with a heavy heart that I did not know of any such mansions.
I lament that Dhaka does not have a Heritage Council, if it had the heritage of Wari would have survived. Surely, modern buildings would go up with time but there should be a symmetry or system even among modern buildings. There is absolutely no sense in the concrete chaos bulldozing over heritage.
There is little left of Dhaka's heritage, and the city is choking with vertical expansion! The city kept on expanding in the north from Pakistan time. It has gone beyond Tongi up to Gazipur. On the eastern and the northeastern sides, bounded by wet and floodplain lands, the expansion spearheaded by dubious developers has run havoc over the area. Dholpur, Manda, Madartek, Ulan, Badda, Kuril, Kalachandpur, Shahzadpur have all grown on low and wetlands. Even Basundhara stands on wetlands. The whole area went under water during the last flood.
I wonder whether these settlements grew with the knowledge or permission of the city planners. Dhaka had a great opportunity of systematically expanding in the south, to Keraniganj across the Buriganga. There was wonderful infrastructure support in the two Buriganga bridges, particularly the Babu Bazar Bridge. Instead, Keraniganj has become an industrial ghetto -- a mishmash of urban and semi-urban settlements. Developing Keraniganj as a middle class settlement could have relieved much of the pressure on the city proper.
The Babu Bazar Bridge is now a deplorable sight. Had Ershad been able to act on his plans of flyovers and metro in Dhaka the pressure of traffic on the city roads would have lessened to a great degree. Should I say Kolkata has several flyovers and a sleek metro while Dhaka gloats with two flyovers7
I grieve over a city where many of us were bom. It has the poorest area to population ratio. Every road is choking with maddening traffic jams. There are more automobiles and fewer roads. Cars are parked on the road, and buses stop anywhere they want to. Pedestrians cross the roads at any point, while the foot over-bridges teem with beggars or stand like forlorn structures. There is not a single main and free-flowing thoroughfare connecting the eastern part with the western part A capital tells a lot about a country. Sadly apathy and avarice are scripting the tale.